Cleveland Institute of Art expansion designed by Winy Maas in jeopardy due to high cost

Blending humor, simplicity and bridgelike engineering, the Cleveland Institute of Art expansion envisioned by Dutch architect Winy Maas hunches up in the middle like a giant inchworm or caterpillar.

The Cleveland Institute of Art has hit the financial wall in its effort to create an iconic new studio building designed by the leading Dutch architect Winy Maas.

After a recent cost estimate that showed the design would cost "well north" of the $55 million budgeted for the project, the art institute decided to scale back, President David Deming said Thursday.

The question now is whether Maas, a principal of the cutting-edge Dutch architecture firm MVRDV, will go back to the drawing board with designers from the Cleveland office of Burt, Hill, the local architect of record.

"We need to find a way to get this project back on budget," Deming said. "We are continuing to have conversations with Winy Maas and Burt, Hill to see if there can't be a way to do some redesigning to move us on. Those conversations are literally going on right now."

When asked whether the art institute might have to go ahead without Maas, Deming said: "I sure hope not. That's why we're having conversations with Winy to see if we can move forward with him, to continue as designer."

Maas could not be reached for comment Thursday afternoon. John Ferchill, the Cleveland developer who will build the institute's project, declined to comment.

Deming said he hopes to resolve the issues over the building design within two or three months so the project can move ahead quickly.

The institute currently operates in two buildings half a mile apart in Cleveland's University Circle district. The art college wants to close its Gund Building at 11141 East Blvd. and consolidate operations at its Joseph McCullough Center for the Visual Arts at 11610 Euclid Ave., a former Ford Model T factory where it has held classes.

Maas was chosen from 40 architects worldwide to design an 80,000-square-foot addition to the McCullough Center. His design, unveiled last October, called for a large, steel-framed glass structure that arched up and sideways at the center like gigantic inchworm.

The bend in the building created an entry-level archway. It also required studios inside the building to be built on flat terraces connected by ramps to make the building wheelchair-accessible. The extra space required for ramps added to the building's size and cost, as did the unusually complicated steel framing needed to create the arch Maas specified.

Cost estimators working for Ferchill said throughout most of the design process that the structure could be built within the art institute's budget.

But when Maas and the institute's trustees sought a second opinion from the Boston office of Davis, Langdon, the number came as a shock. Deming and Gary Johnson, chairman of the institute's board, declined to give the specific figure. But Deming said it "was significantly overbudget."

The college has raised $18 million, along with $16 million to $18 million in tax credits. Trustees decided they could not raise more than $55 million for the expansion project, Johnson said.

The project is to be one of the major anchors of Case Western Reserve University's proposed University Arts and Retail District, which will also include a new building for the Museum of Contemporary Art Cleveland.

The respected Cleveland architect Peter van Dijk, who serves on the institute's board and who chaired the committee that chose Maas, said, "I'm trying my best to save" the project. "I think we can still save it."

Daniel Cuffaro, who chairs the institute's industrial design department, said: "It would be very disappointing to think there's an internationally recognized firm that has built successful buildings all around the world with aesthetics, cost and utility in mind, and that that was not able to happen here. That would be a big disappointment."

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